mothers2mothers

Long-time friends Mitch and Gene pursued very different paths: Mitch became a doctor and worked in developing countries, while Gene was successful in business and became a senior media executive. In 2000, Mitch moved to Cape Town, South Africa. His medical practice focused his attention on women who learned that they were HIV positive during their first prenatal visit. Many of them fled the clinic, never to return. Those who stayed did not get much counseling or education about their disease from the overworked doctors and nurses. A third of them gave birth to HIV positive babies. He realized that the other two-thirds – HIV-positive mothers who remained strong and took steps, including clinical treatments, to reduce the risk of infecting their babies – could be trained to work alongside clinic staff to comfort and counsel the terrified young women who had just learned their HIV status at the prenatal clinic. He launched m2m in 2001. Gene, who had been involved in HIV/AIDS issues for nearly 20 years, visited the first m2m site while on vacation. He was struck by the parallels to the early days of HIV/AIDS in the U.S., and realized that Mitch, who was running m2m on a shoestring, did not have the experience to build an organization capable of achieving global impact. So he moved to Cape Town and served as m2m’s executive director for a decade. Mitch continues to advise m2m as a non-voting member of the m2m US Board of Directors. He is currently focused on a new social entrepreneurial venture called AgeWell- a program using m2m’s Peer Mentor Approach to employ and train senior citizens to promote the well-being and health of other, less able seniors.

Gene left m2m in 2011 to pursue other opportunities back in the U.S. Frank Beadle de Palomo became CEO in 2012.